R.E.M.‘s Michael Stipe is taking a stand against Meta for “helping advance the far right in America” by boycotting their apps, and he’s encouraging his fans and followers to do the same.
In a recent Instagram post, Stipe shared a graphic for the “Lights Out Meta” campaign, which calls for social media users to log out of all Meta platforms from Jan. 19 – 26. This would include Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Messenger, WhatsApp, Giphy, Meta Quest, and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.
“I’ll be logged off for the week. Starting tomorrow,” Stipe wrote in his post. “Please consider doing the same so corporations like Meta can imagine there might be consequences for helping advance the far right in America and worldwide. Or are we too addicted [that] we can’t log off even for one week?”
Over on the post’s caption, Stipe called Meta “gross” and added that he is “really happy to step away” for a short period of time in “protest.” Stipe explained that he would eventually “come back and decide what to do from there.”
The boycott of Meta platforms comes days after CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would drop their fact-checking program for Facebook and Instagram, claiming it made “too many mistakes and too much censorship” and is “too politically biased.”
Instead, Facebook and Instagram will utilize a method similar to the “community notes” model used by X (formerly Twitter), though Billboard notes that this structure has been met with a lot of criticism from experts over concerns of widespread dangerous far-right ideology.
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